SMAC Venice is presenting an exhibition dedicated to the Italian post-war artist Alighiero Boetti (Turin, 1940 – Rome, 1994). Curated by Elena Geuna and supported by Ben Brown Fine Arts, the exhibition will be on view from 7 May to 22 November 2026, coinciding with the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. It includes approximately eighty works displayed across eight galleries and covers more than twenty-five years of the artist’s career, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Venice (Italy), May 7, 2026.
Exhibition text (excerpt):
Bringing together approximately one hundred works across eight galleries, the exhibition offers an expansive survey of one of the most influential artists of the post-war period. Spanning more than twenty-five years, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, it traces the full arc of Boetti’s artistic trajectory and highlights the breadth and complexity of his practice.
Conceived as a constellation that invites viewers to inhabit the space between idea and form, order and disorder, Alighiero Boetti reflects the artist’s enduring interest in duality, systems and process. From his early works rooted in simple materials and elementary structures as proposed by the Arte Povera group, to later collaborative and conceptually layered projects, the presentation foregrounds the internal coherence of a practice that consistently tested its own premises while embracing chance, repetition and shared authorship as generative forces.
The exhibition opens with a room devoted to self-portraiture and the question of identity, addressing Boetti’s lifelong engagement with the notion of the double. This inquiry found its clearest expression in 1972, when he adopted the dual signature “Alighiero e Boetti.” Works such as Autoritratto (1969) and Gemelli (1968) explore identity as split, mirrored, and multiplied, while the artist’s use of paired forms and serial structures introduces a logic of duality that would remain fundamental to his practice.
